blood, the sun, and water
by frizzoli
Summary: their world is the worst in all the world, but it's only them that thinks that way. In a time of rebellion and in a place of slaughter, Jane and Maura, tributes of the 66th hunger games, find that their lives intertwine. f/f. j and m, rated m for later.
1. surrounds every thought

**A/N**: _hey, guys. As it stands, I'm working on the sequel to 'playing house in the ruins of us', but because I saw The Hunger Games three times in a week and because my best friend evenmoreso is so supportive and wonderful, this was born. I know there's another, much better hunger games crossover au floating around, but I'd appreciate it if you guys would bear with me…and maybe even try to keep the two separate in your minds? I haven't read the other AU and I don't expect that I will until this is finished (it's already outlined in detail and I have two or three chapters written), so hopefully there won't be any overlap. You should be able to recognize some of the characters; they're all much younger here._

_In case you're curious, here are some of the faceclaims: Saorise Ronan as young Maura, Katie McGrath (with brown eyes obviously) as young Jane, Joe Dempsie as Grant, Eddie Redmayne as Pike, and smirky Mr. Max Irons as young Hoyt._

_Happy reading! Reviews appreciated._

_.,,.,.,.,.,._

Jane wakes up wondering if the Reaping is different everywhere. She supposes the answer to that question is yes, but she can't imagine it being any different than it is in District 10; can't imagine what life is like anywhere else. She's never had any reason to. She reserves the morning of the Reaping every year to think about the rest of Panem. The rest of the year is spent working. The rest of the year is spent _surviving_.

She's eighteen, as of last week. It's her last year in that glass bowl. She's in it 50 times.

Tessarae was the only option this year, after two of their cows died off, leaving them with just the one. It hadn't bothered her to apply, and she hadn't told anyone n the family. They had to have noticed when she came home with grain and bread and husks of meat, but none of them said a word. It wouldn't have done them any good to be angry with her- even Angela knew that.

It's early, maybe four in the morning, and she knows better than to think she'll sleep again, so she climbs out of bed and slips past Tommy and Frankie, into the yard. Jo is waiting for her and jumps to her feet to follow the path Jane makes out to the pasture. Joe's a good dog; small and quiet but company enough. Between Jo and Lloran, Jane's mornings are the most social part of her day.

Lloran is grazing in the dewy grass behind the cattle barn when she finds him. He greets her with a low nicker and his soft nose against her arm, and because it's so early she doesn't bother to saddle him. Instead she swings up onto his back after untying his leadline, and they set out into the pastures.

The reaping doesn't matter here. Nothing matters here but the cattle and the horse beneath her. She can feel the rise and fall of Lloran's ribs beneath her legs and each soft breath of wind across the grass. She cannot feel the anxiety of another reaping. She cannot feel death creeping up on the District like a thunderhead, looming and inevitable. She thinks, as she often does, that if she kept riding she could get far enough away that she wouldn't have to come back again.

But she does come back. She always does.

By the time she's done the milking, Frankie and Tommy are already back from the pastures, being forced into starched shirts and pants that are far too big for them. They don't speak. Angela does enough for the three of them, anyway, assuring them that the odds really are in their favor, that if they stand very still and look very clean they won't get chosen anyway. Jane knows that none of this is true. The odds are absolutely not in her favor today, and even if she could manage to look clean or stand still she knows it wouldn't change the fifty slips of paper with her name on it.

"We should skip it one year," Tommy says as Jane herds them out of the door, Jo snuffling at their heels. "Just not show up. What's the point anyway? There're too many people in the district for them to choose us." Jane doesn't answer him, because the statement is too stupid for her to bother and because she's not sure she'd be able to, past the lump in her throat. Because what if she's leaving the house for the last time? What if she never sees the stupid cow again? What if she never rides another horse? "Shut up," Frankie shoves Tommy, who doesn't even have time to go after his brother before Jane has them each by an ear and pushes them into line ahead of her.

They're very clearly a family. In a district where almost everyone is small and sturdy and fair-haired, they stand out like a trio of idiots. Especially Jane and Tommy, who stand at least three inches taller than most of the others- and Tommy's only fourteen, so she's sure he'll outgrow even her within a year. Frankie at least skipped out on the lanky gene and fits in stature-wise with the rest of their known world, but he's still dark-haired, and he's still one of them. Which in turn means that he gets teased just as much as she and Tommy do, even if he refuses to admit it.

They don't say goodbye because they're all too superstitious for their own good, and saying goodbye makes it far too likely that one of them will never see the pastures again. As the square fills, Jane fidgets. It takes every ounce of her willpower not to run for the hills in the distance, to the lowing cattle and restless horses and swaying grasses she has always called her home. She's so busy pretending she's far away that she hardly even hears the film being shown, the introduction, any of it.

She doesn't notice anything until she realizes that everyone is staring at her. And that's when she hears her name.

.,.

Miles away, Maura fights the urge to turn and run as fast as she can. This was not supposed to happen. The odds were supposed to be in _her_ favor. She sees her parents out of the corner of her eye and they are impassive as ever. She hates them for it. She hates the whole District for it.

She woke that morning with a start and a gasp from the same nightmare she'd been having for weeks. She could never remember it, but some way or another she always knew when she woke that it was the same dream. Her parents were gone when she woke, as they usually were. It was only about an hour later that she remembered it was reaping day and nearly speared her thumb with a needle.

And now what? She has no siblings to volunteer for her. She can't fight, really, and she knows it wouldn't matter if she could. She walks fast enough that the Peacekeepers are a few feet behind her the whole way. She nearly stumbles up the stairs to the platform, but nobody laughs. She's sixteen. She's a tailor's daughter. She's already dead.

There's a pause before they move on, and from her vantage point Maura makes eye contact with her mother, who immediately looks away. Then their escort's hand is in the bowl again, and before Maura knows it, the tallest boy in the district is standing beside her, blinking uncomfortably under all the attention. His name is Pike, and she's never met him before. He's 18 and she knows without having to really think about it that when the sponsors have to choose between them, it won't be her that they choose. The odds, as they say, are not very much in her favor.

She's hustled onto the train and jostled around by the peacekeepers and by Pike, who doesn't seem to notice her at all. She curls up on one end of the couch in their luxury car and tries to shut everything out. If she's going to die she wants it to be soon. If she's going to die she wants it to happen now so that she doesn't have to think about it. But isn't that the point? Isn't the point really that by the time they, as tributes, get into the arena…they've lost their mind thinking about the kids they'll have to kill and the fact that they're going to die, no matter what choices they make?

She knows that it is.

Their mentor's name is Murphy and she's blonde and very stern. Pike asks questions and Murphy answers them in clipped tones; Maura doesn't take any of it in. She tries, but a moment later she's forgotten them all. It's only when they get around to watching the overviews of the other Reapings that she can focus, because Murphy is gone, and Pike is picking at his fingernails and ignoring her.

District one: Nitya, the girl, is slight but looks as if she's both fast and cunning. There's something in her face that makes Maura nervous. Not as nervous as she is when the boy steps up onto the stage. Hoyt is lean and muscular and he smiles winningly at the audience as they cheer for their champions. He's the kind of Tribute that could easily kill a twelve year old begging for mercy and not lose a wink of sleep. Maura's stomach twists into knots and she sinks further into the couch.

Hoyt looks into the camera and into Maura and smirks.

.,.

Jane immediately sees that she isn't too bad off, as far as Tributes go. This year it seems like the Careers, for the most part, are pitted against each other. This is strange because they usually band together; she can't help but be suspicious of them pulling a trick, and she doesn't even think about trying to ally herself with any of them. They're scum, anyway. Lapdogs. And much more likely, on the whole, to win. District one's tributes clearly hate each other. She only catches a glimpse of the boy from one, but it's enough to know that he's the real contender. He has a perpetual smirk that makes her want to punch him repeatedly in the face. Much like she wants to punch the boy from her district, Grant, repeatedly in _his_ face for having an ego the size of the Capitol.

But districts five, six, and seven are mostly non-threatening. The boy from five is no older than fourteen and scrawny. She watches him move from training station to training station and knows with an air of solidarity that he will be dead almost immediately, unless he's hiding something incredible. She swallows what might have been pity or sadness and turns her head away, knowing that emotions won't help her now. Both tributes from 6 are around her age, and the boy isn't bad with knots or camouflage. She thinks about asking him for help before she realizes that he's blind, and that the girl is the one talking him through every step. Something about their partnership seems exclusive, and Jane's too busy being distracted to wonder whether or not she should approach either of them.

Seven has a girl who has to be 18, and who seems to have missed most of her training. Either that or she's purposely missing targets with the axes she should have been able to throw with absolute precision. The boy of her district is preoccupying himself with the poisonous plants table, which is something Jane has no experience in and can't understand the use of studying. There's no guarantee there are going to be _any_ plants in the arena, needless to say any that are recognizable to _any_ of them.

The girl from district 9- Thyme was her name- seemed to be more than relatively skilled with fire, but that isn't really something you could teach, and even if it was Jane has no desire to ally herself with someone who walks so _loudly_ when she knows that her best chance to survive at all is to hide until it's all over.

In fact, the truth of the matter is that she doesn't want an ally at all. She knows better than to think she'll win the Games, but she knows she could, more than likely, survive until the top eight, simply because she's a good hider; a good distance runner, and mostly inconspicuous.

.,.

Maura doesn't think Jane is inconspicuous. Jane is, in fact, the person she pays the most attention to. Partially, that's to distract herself from Hoyt. Jane is fast and strong and beautiful, olive-skinned and muscular with hard, bright eyes. Maura can see Jane watching everyone else in the training center and wonders what's going through her head.

Maura, for her own part, tries to stay under the radar. She works with some plants, some fire, and some rope. She avoids the combat because that is her weak point and she doesn't need to be reminded of how easily most of the other Tributes could snap her in half. She does, however, find herself drawing to the climbing net.

Once there she realizes that Hoyt is behind her in line. He's talking animatedly with the girl from district 4- Pomme is her name- and telling her how he was the fastest climber in district 1. For a moment Maura can't help but wonder if it's possible to get out of line, but she knows that the sponsors will see it if she does, and she's already in enough of a dilemma. She just really, really does not need Hoyt to notice her.

As it happens, the odds could not be _less_ in her favor. She takes the first cautious step and then she's climbing. She's small, and she's logical and she thinks fast enough to know where she needs to put her feet and why that works. She's to the top before she knows it. And once she's there, once she turns around for the return journey, she sees Hoyt looking up at her with his perpetual smirk growing by the second.

He zeros in on her and she trembles slightly as she rappels herself back to the ground. She's no longer under the radar- in fact, she is exactly in the center of Hoyt's. He brushes past her on the way to the net, whispers to her.

"I'll be looking for you, Eight."

She doesn't sleep that night.


	2. alone always feels that way

Training is a nightmare.

Hoyt finds every opportunity to corner her and he follows her from station to station, watching. Maura spends the whole day swallowing the bile that rises whenever she makes eye contact with him and doing what she can to ignore him, but she knows it's useless. He has a plan for her, and there's nothing she can do to avoid it. He's going to kill her. She'll be lucky if she gets two feet from the platform before he does. It's almost a relief to think that things will be over so soon, except that there's a large part of her that is sure he's not going to kill her right away. There's something in the way he watches her that makes her feel as if his plan is more intricate than that, as if she's in for something she can't even begin to imagine or understand.

She's so busy running from Hoyt that she almost topples the girl from District 3 in her haste. The girl, who is only a few inches taller than her but imposing and sharp, pushes her away and says something about her being useless before moving on. Hoyt laughs. Melioe tells him to watch it, and he tells her, simply, "Don't bother. She's mine."

Maura has never wanted so badly _not_ to belong.

.,.

Jane catches drift of Hoyt's obsession with the girl from District 8 almost immediately. It has become clear that Hoyt is the biggest contender of the group, and she's trying to learn his weaknesses, but for all the moving around he does, he doesn't actually _do_ very much. It's as if he's well aware that she's looking for a chink in the armor, and to combat it he's not showing her his armor at all. Instead he follows around a sweet-faced little girl from an outlying district. Jane can't even put her finger on why exactly that makes her so sick. She's so busy analyzing it that she doesn't notice Grant come up beside her, hair slick with sweat. "She's dangerous, that one," he says.

"Who?" She really doesn't want to talk to him. She doesn't like that he thinks he's the District's gift. She especially doesn't like the fact that everyone else seems to agree, including their mentor, Claude. He's really not any better than she is- he's just better _looking_ and more likeable. "District 8. Her name's Mary or something."

Jane pulls a face and picks up a length of rope, testing the weight in her hands. It's heavy enough to make a decent lasso. Maybe it's time she show some of _her_ strengths. "Grant, look at her. She's probably fifteen. She looks like she's about to crap herself at any second." More than that, this girl has the kind of face you'd expect to see in a Capitol video…not the kind of face you'd expect to see on a killer. "Those are the ones to watch," he tells her, turning to leave. She scoffs at his retreating back and loops the rope into a lasso. "_Wow_, you're a mentor already."

Hoyt is the one to watch. Grant is over thinking it. Jane is sure that she's right.

.,.

On the last day of training before the ratings, Maura strays from her usual path back to the 8th floor. She does it by accident, hitting the wrong button in the elevator and finding herself on the roof. For a moment it really shocks her that the security is so lax, and then she realizes that they really don't care where she goes, as long as she's in the building. It doesn't matter to them. They're too busy focusing on the tortures they're going to unleash on her and the others in the Arena.

She hesitates briefly but decides the fresh air is too nice to pass up. As she rounds the corner, she sees a familiar shape leaning over the edge of the roof. It's Hoyt. She doesn't know what he's doing but she doesn't want to stay to find out. She turns on her heels and reaches the elevator just in time for it to close, and by the time she has frantically pressed the 'down' button, he's noticed her.

"Where do you think _you're_ going, eight?"

"I'm…l-lost," she stammers, but she doesn't turn to look at him.  
"Stay a while," he purrs, coming up behind her. She can feel his breath on the back of her neck. She shakes her head, trembling, closing her eyes. "It's against the rules."  
He laughs. She should have known that was a weak defense. Maura is full-on shaking when she feels him brush the hair off the back of her neck. "Please let me go."

His hand is around her elbow within moments and he spins her around with no regard for the damage he's doing, twisting her arm. The breath is knocked out of her when he pushes her against the wall but she opens her mouth to scream anyway. His thumbs press into her throat and he smirks at her, eyes dark and calculating. "Scream and I'll break your neck right here and right now."

So she falls silent. She doesn't fight him. How could she fight him? He'd kill her. He probably will when he's done with her, anyway. He keeps one hand around her throat and drops the other to her thigh, runs it up over her ribs, resting just below her breast. "Please," she tries again, struggling briefly. "Please don't." It has the opposite effect of the one she wanted. He grins even wider, presses his hips into hers. "Ask me again."

"You're trying to frighten me," she tells him instead, managing to calm her voice, calm her shaking. Hoyt's smile grows wolfish and he leans closer, lowers his voice, as if he's telling a huge secret: "I am."

For the first time in a few minutes, Maura opens her eyes, to make contact with his.

"I'm not afraid of you."

She's lying.

.,.

Jane goes to the roof on purpose. She goes to the roof because she's trying to avoid Grant and trying to avoid Claude and trying to avoid anyone who could possibly distract her from the Games ahead. And what she gets, instead, is a horrendously unpleasant surprise.

She hears him the second the elevator door opens. He's murmuring to someone- a girl, a girl who is whimpering, tucked into the shadows against the far wall. Jane doesn't think about what she does next.

"Hey!"

Hoyt's head snaps around and his grin falls when he makes eye contact with her. "Leave her alone," she hisses.

They fight. It happens pretty quickly. It starts with him approaching her and when he gets close enough she clocks him right in the jaw. She doesn't have the patience for it; his ego is huge and whoever it was he had pinned up against that wall doesn't deserve his slimy hands all over her. Speaking of which, the elevator door closes somewhere between the time he has her in a headlock and the moment she knees him in the groin.

She throws him off and gets far enough away that she can watch him straighten up. "You're _sick_," she tells him, wiping the blood from her lip with the back of her hand. Her stylist is going to kill her. She can't seem to make herself care about it, except to shudder at the idea of the hours she'll have to spend being 'redone'.

Hoyt spits.

"You're first on my list."

.,.

The ratings day comes and Maura resigns herself to no higher than a 5.

She's shaking slightly when she walks into the room, but she barely announces herself before getting to work. The net comes together under her fingers with practiced ease; she can hear murmurs from the gamemakers and knows they're shocked that anyone outside of four can manage something like this. She's lucky, really. It comes from years of studying the geometric designs in the fabrics her mother made. Knowing where to knot the rope so that it would hold is something of the same kind of logic.

The makeshift net is done quickly. The gamemakers are starting to fall quiet by the time she sets the trap up. The dummy is heavy, but she manages to push it to the edge of the netted trap. She takes one of the swords off the rack just to push the dummy the last inch, because she knows what standing too close will do, if she gets caught.

The trap snaps and the makeshift pully she rigged to the climbing pole yanks the heavy dummy up into the air by the 'ankles'. The rest of the net does as she planned, creating a tight cocoon so that, if the dummy had been alive, moving would have been next to impossible. She looks up at it where it swings back and forth and then looks up at the gamemakers, who are silent and expressionless.

Maura curtsies and leaves.

.,.

Jane doesn't go the normal route. She can fight- she can throw knives, she can fight with a sword, she can shoot a bow and arrow probably better than most of the other tributes except the Careers. The thing is, doing things like that is not going to convince them of anything other than the fact that she's not going to be the first to die. And after the night before, after punching Hoyt in the face and feeling his blood on her hands, she knows she needs to be a contender- needs to get a _good_ score- or he's going to kill her and quickly.

So she crosses her fingers that there will be rope in the room, and when she sees the coil, perfect size, waiting in the center of the room, her heart leaps.

It takes her something like a minute and a half to make a lasso. It takes her less than that to find the right dummy to use. She's careful not to make any noise when she walks, careful that the only sound Is the gentle slip of the rope through the air- like silk on skin, a quiet and comforting _shhhhh_ until she whips her arm forward and the lasso becomes a noose.

She doesn't miss her mark. Her leverage is perfect. The loop falls around the dummy's neck and she doesn't hesitate- if it had been a person, after all, any hesitation would give them time to react- and she snaps her arm back as hard as she can. She would never do this at home because she's been taught her whole life that this is a good way to break a calf's neck. This time, that's the point. Her strength, her leverage, her timing, and the dummy's weak spot all combine and in one moment she realizes things have gone much better than she could have expected.

The dummy's head falls at her feet with a thud. Stuffing flutters to the ground around her. The gamemakers are silent.

"That's the show, folks."

.,.

Maura gets a seven.

Jane, a ten.

Hoyt, a ten.

.,.

That night Jane goes back to the roof to get away from the Games. Part of her is hoping that Hoyt is stupid enough to show up again, but she's not surprised that he's not. He's pretty damn smart. She's leaning over the edge, looking down at the gaudy city below, when a voice behind her comes close to making her fall over. "Careful. There's a force field."

She turns immediately, steadying herself, and finds that she's almost face to face with another Tribute. She racks her brain until she remembers he's the one from District 3, but she doesn't remember his name. "I…figured as much," she replies, wary. He's looking at her funny and he's standing a little too close.

"I'm Frost," he says, extending a hand. Jane hesitates and shifts so that her back isn't to the building's edge before taking it. His eyes never leave hers. There's something strange about him, something too calm and too knowing for her to be comfortable with it. He stands beside her, hands in his pockets as he looks over the city, and she takes the opportunity to really look him over and see what she's up against.

He's handsome, certainly, with skin the color of the expensive ground coffee she's seen sell for as much as a whole cow. He's in shape, too, though she wonders what exactly his strengths are and wishes she'd been paying closer attention. Not that it matters, though, since clearly Hoyt is going to kill her- or try to kill her- before anyone else gets the chance. Besides which Frost doesn't seem like someone she needs to worry about. Not because he's weak, but because he doesn't take advantage of the situation to do what she's doing now- assessing the competition.

"It's sick, don't you think?"

His voice jars her and she jumps slightly before clearing her throat and following his gaze. Below them, hundreds of Capitol citizens are laughing, singing, dancing. "What's sick?" she asks, a split second before she understands.

"Training kids to fight and kill one another."

This time when she jumps it's because she's sure a hovercraft is going to gun them down. She peers over her shoulder but she can't see any cameras. "They don't monitor up here," he tells her calmly, "they know we can't go anywhere."

She's dubious, but she's going to die in a few days regardless of what she says, so she speaks. "It _is_ sick. It's sick in every possible way."

"Yes," he agrees, "and we're going to stop them."

She could stop _him_, if she wanted to. Some part of her knows where this conversation is going, and another part of her doesn't want to know. Somehow, though, she knows this is important, knows that for some reason she needs to hear it. So she lets him tell her.

He describes the rebellion. He describes the underground meetings, the burgeoning District 13, and the plans for the future. She doesn't ask him how he knows what he knows- she's not even sure he's telling the truth- but she wants to believe it's real. When he's done, she wallows in it for a minute before she asks him the real question: "Why me? Why are you telling _me_ this?"

For the first time since the handshake, he makes eye contact. His are bright and wild, alive with the fervor of rebellion, with the future he seems so sure will come. She wants his conviction. She wants to believe what he believes. She wants to believe that her brothers, that their children, could be safe from this slaughter. "Because you're special," he tells her. "Because you have a chance of winning this thing, and because you don't feed into it the way the rest of them do. You're not a killer."

"I'll kill when I have to," she tells him. "It doesn't bother me half as much as it should." In a way she's telling the truth- she's killed countless cows, calves, pigs whose screams sound eerily like those of a person. It had taken Tommy and Frankie years to get over it, but she had been a natural from day one. "Well," Frost smiles, turning to walk away, "then maybe you'll win."

.,.

By some miracle of nature, Maura manages to sleep the night before she faces certain death.

It's the exhaustion, she's sure, because she wakes an hour before they come to wake her, her eyes swollen, blood under her fingernails. There are little marks in her palms where she dug those nails in. Her head hurts from grinding her teeth. In an ironic twist of fate, sleeping did her worse than exhaustion could have.

The rest of the morning is a blur of preparation. Breakfast, where she is advised to eat as much as possible (which is not much). They scrub her clean again and tie her hair up, though she knows she'll take it down if she can get away from the Cornucopia alive. They dress her in this year's outfit, which, like many others, is predominantly black and waterproof. The material is light, which she takes to mean that the arena will be warm this year.

Pike almost looks handsome. She sees him for a brief moment before they're shuttled off into their separate corridors and forced onto hovercrafts. The dark material makes him look less thin and brings out the freckles across his face. He glances at her and immediately looks away. The hovercraft is silent. She's sitting in between the District 3 boy, whose hands are clasped patiently in his lap, and a girl she doesn't recognize. She can almost make out a head of dark curls bent to the side and knows it's Jane, the girl from the roof.

Several things happen at once. The hovercraft begins to descend and it does so quickly enough that Maura's ears pop. Jane looks up and Maura is surprised by the strength of her profile, her high cheekbones and pursed lips. Perhaps she's surprised because the last time she saw Jane, her face was dotted with blood. Hoyt's not on the hovercraft; more than likely they separated him and Jane, which means that in her own way Jane has saved Maura once more.

.,.

_Ten._

Jane shifts on the platform, careful that she doesn't overstep. The last thing she needs is to embarrass her family by exploding before she has a chance to avoid being speared or shot or bludgeoned. She makes the mistake of looking to her left, and, of course, two platforms over Hoyt is flexing. His focus is on the Cornucopia and the pile of goods that awaits him. Jane can see a half-open pack by the back corner of it and recognizes the coil of rope that it holds as her only hope. She'll have to physically cross Hoyt's path if she's going to get at it. She knows without a shadow of a doubt that the Gamemakers planned this.

_Nine._

On the other side of the circle, Maura glances over her shoulder and sees the thick woods. They're not like the woods at the edge of her District. They're a different kind of tree entirely, without leaves- needles, she thinks, and realizes that she's not going to recognize a single animal, fruit, or root in the arena. Still, the woods are her best hope. She shifts so that her feet are no longer facing forward and prepares to run for her life.

_Eight._

Frost is a few spots to Jane's right. She can see that his eyes are on someone- the redheaded girl from his district- but then, as if he can sense her, he turns and meets her gaze. He's beyond calm.

_Seven._

Maura feels the sweat start to collect in her shallow palms.

_Six._

Hoyt looks around and Jane looks straight ahead. She sees him recognize her, sees the shift in his body language that indicates a change of course. He's going to come right for her. She's going to have to take him. Is she ready?

_Five._

Maura knows she'll need something to make a net out of if her plan is going to work. She supposes she'll have to hide in the trees until a body is left alone long enough for her to steal something. Is she ready?

_Four._

Probably not. He's bigger, maybe even faster.

_Three._

Probably not. She'll have to be fast enough and quiet enough to avoid detection, and even if she is, there's no guarantee that she'll find anything useful.

_Two._

With almost no time left on the clock Jane realizes there's a surefire way to fake him out. She makes eye contact with him and smiles as widely as she can. The confusion that flashes across his face is almost worth it.

_One._

And then, just as quickly as silence had fallen, all hell breaks loose.


End file.
